The DECMATE II shared the same case, power supply unit and RX50 dual floppy drive as the Rainbow 100 and was sold as a desktop or tower stand system. Like DECMATE I and III, it was a member of the PDP-8 family based on the Harris 12-bit 6120, a single chip PDP-8 compatible microprocessor.
The same year, DEC launched the Rainbow 100, a Z80/8088 based system to compete with CP/M and MS-DOS machines, as well as the PDP-11 Professional system.
The DECMATE II was the Decmate series most versatile system. Customer could choose between either one or two dual 5.25" floppy disc drives, or a 5, 10 or 20 MB hard disc, or even 8" floppy drives. Several option boards were also available. Among them, a Z80 card for CP/M compatibility and a graphic board allowing a color monitor to be used.
Digital corporation provided a large range of professional software. However, the Decmate II was mainly used for professionnal word processing, connected to a serial letter quality printer.
The Z-80 card was also required for the optional spell checker function in WPS. With the Z-80 and CP/M, you could run VisiCalc and later Lotus 123 and dBase.
Friday 14th January 2011
Ron Cooper (Tennessee, USA)
NAME
DECMATE II
MANUFACTURER
Digital Equipment Corporation
TYPE
Professional Computer
ORIGIN
U.S.A.
YEAR
1982
END OF PRODUCTION
1986
BUILT IN LANGUAGE
None
KEYBOARD
Full-stroke 106 keys with 20 function keys, editing and numeric keypads
CPU
12 bit Harris 6120
SPEED
4 or 8 MHz
RAM
32 KB
ROM
4 KB
TEXT MODES
80 chars x 25 lines
GRAPHIC MODES
None in Basic version
COLOrsc
Monochrome
SOUND
Beeper
I/O PORTS
Monitor, Serial, Printer
BUILT IN MEDIA
1 or 2 x RX50 dual 5.25'' floppy disc drives Optional 5, 10 or 20 MB hard disk
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